


I'd Already Know

by Charliesmusings



Category: Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Songfic, better late than never tho so here it is!, fluff is right at the end and it kills me, it's me i'm people, people are at all times hollering about the inherent intimacy of hand holding and hair stroking, this was posted on tumblr a while back and guess who forgot to chuck it here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28497963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charliesmusings/pseuds/Charliesmusings
Summary: Skrael thinks too much. It's lucky that he's got Bellroc there to help...
Relationships: Bellroc/Skrael (Tales of Arcadia)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	I'd Already Know

**Author's Note:**

> Mr. Gary Cherone and Mr. Nuno Bettencourt pls I'd just like to ask you how it feels to be the writers of one of the softest love songs in existence...

[Skrael has never had much trouble finding the correct word](https://youtu.be/UrIiLvg58SY) for something he wants to say; if he must decide in the moment, he will simply pause, evaluate, and carry on as if the hesitation had not occurred at all. It is not that he is embarrassed by the pause, of course; it’s just that it doesn’t need to be acknowledged.

Few things, in Skrael’s opinion, absolutely _must_ be acknowledged, unless it has some sense of value to him. Of course, this isn’t to say that he is a stranger to meaningless conversation— when one lives for as long as he and the Order have, one learns to find entertainment in many things, including words for the sake of words. Talking for the purpose of company, for the purpose of doing something together.

For example, Nari and he have engaged in frequent, pointless debates about topics like the dinosaurs, shadow mephit breeding, and _would it be so bad if we created an eighth continent, just to see what would happen?_ They could go back and forth for hours, merely passing time, ruffling each other’s feathers, knocking shoulders against each other as they grow increasingly animated in their talks.

It is said that the average human will speak over eight hundred billion words in their lifetime. Considering the thousands of years that Skrael has been around, he is willing to guess that his number of words spoken dwarfs that of a human with a mere one-hundred year lifespan.

However, were he to compare declarations of verbal affection, he’d likely find himself swallowed whole by the humans’ count. They are so expressive, so quick to spout words of love; so quick to wish desperately that they’d hear them in return. He cannot hope to compete with that. He hoards his affection close to his heart, imprisons it from the light of day. A softer soul had only ever gotten him into trouble, had only ever laid him bare to the harm that came naturally to two living souls interacting with one another. It was a byproduct, the consequence of allowing someone into one’s life, he knew. But he’d never been too keen on paying that toll. Some conclusions simply were not worth it to him.

Yet, traitorous his mind is.

Sitting in the dark, knees pulled to his chest, on a window sill overlooking the clouds below, he considers words, and their meanings. He turns them over in his mind, asks what he would do without them. They cloud his mind, sometimes, or make it clear. They wound him as they lift him. They are spoken so carefully, but grate against the back of his teeth as he struggles to hold them back. He is not impulsive, and will never be. He cannot be. Not the way that Bellroc can.

Bellroc, whom he should not think about when he feels this way, when he considers these grand topics. They will become something grander if he allows himself indulgence like this.

Yet, unlike words, thoughts are difficult to temper. They do not go quietly, nor gently, into that good night; the night which occurs every few weeks, when he cannot stop his selfishness from unfurling itself before him, under the contemplative stars.

Oh, the things he’d say to them were he a braver soul.

Oh, the things he’d do, or perhaps, already does, should words fail him, as they are wont to do, sometimes.

See, words cannot fully express the extent of what he feels on these nights, nor what he wishes for.

It is all he can do, most times, to simply hang onto the driftwood his mind supplies him, as the wave of emotion crashes, white-capped and merciless.

His head thunks against the side of the window in which he perches.

It is three measly words that have done this to him. Three measly words which spear his gut, which sit behind his eyelids, inside his molars, which fight against the barricade he’s made for them.

Three measly words he wants say, but cannot. For his sake, perhaps, or the mission’s. They do not have time for dalliances of the heart. They do not have time for him to waste on matters of linguistics. They have a duty to perform, a balance to uphold, and nothing, _nothing,_ is more important than that.

_What a lie that is_ , Skrael’s mind supplies.

_Silence._ His amygdala fires back.

It is by the time his own personal siege begins in his brain that Skrael admits the night is lost. He cannot work like this. He cannot search for Nari like this. Not with his mind so desperately scraping at the bricks he’d laid down to trap words that he should not utter, not if he wants to survive.

Not if he wants his ribcage to quit aching.

But when ice gets cold, truly cold, it becomes brittle. Easy to pick at, easy to shatter. He should have considered this when he created the boundaries of his heart; of course his barriers are ice— he knows nothing else.

Except flame, perhaps. Flame, the only thing that can help him, now. The only thing that he’s ever known that could feel so gentle and winsome, and so, utterly, abjectly, engulfing, overpowering, and impossibly intense, all at the same time.

A hand skims past his, and drops onto his shoulder.

His eyes meet ones of embers and burning coals, scorching completely whatever thought he’d had in his mind, then.

They do not speak. His eyes flick to their warm hand, and then back to their warmer eyes. He tastes cinnamon in his throat, and breathes in the smell of firewood.

Bellroc lowers, joining him on the sill, and— _oh_ , they are close now. His eyes are wide, and he is stricken speechless, as they cross their arms over their chest and pin him in place with their gaze.

He searches desperately for words, trying, and trying, but he cannot find them among the shards of ice scattered around his brain, and in his chest, in his lungs.

He must look frightened, he thinks, because concern has overtaken searching eyes, as they ponder the nature of his panic.

And then something cuts through it.

Fingertips, brushing across the back of his hand, which had gripped the windowsill without his conscious decision. A puff of air is punched from his lungs, and when it leaves him, their contrasting climates cause it to come out as ice and steam. Skrael’s eyes follow it for a moment, stalling, as he knows that he is being asked permission, but he is not sure what to choose.

He evidently takes too long to answer, however, as the feather-light touch begins to retreat, and— _oh_ , there is his decision made—

He flips his hand over, and takes theirs between curled fingers and his thumb, which, absently, rubs over their knuckles. The two of them freeze for a moment, hands encapsulated in something which they do not identify, something which putting a name to would surely crush them under its weight.

Then, in a moment of unspoken unity, cold and hot weave together, ten fingers interlocking between the two of them.

The fortress is silent, but the air seems to buzz.

_More than words  
Is all you have to do to make it real  
Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me_

A heated head finds a cold shoulder to rest upon; cold, but not closed off.

A free, freezing hand winds its way up and curls into his companion’s hair, stroking ever-so-gently.

Not a single word is spoken; it is not necessary.

For once, Skrael appreciates a thoughtless night.

_'Cause I'd already know._


End file.
